


i just can't look (it's killing me)

by x (ordinary)



Series: savages fit for a wasteland [3]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Blind Fury, Canon-Typical Violence, Depersonalization, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Pining, Rage, Recreational Drug Use, SO, Technically pre-relationship but well on their way, Unresolved Sexual Tension, first time i've ever used that tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-08
Updated: 2015-12-08
Packaged: 2018-05-05 15:33:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5380490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ordinary/pseuds/x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hancock goes down in a fight and Felicia loses it. He has to talk her down, afterwards, coax her out of the wildfire burning that is her rage. </p><p>And maybe, just maybe, she notices that he notices her, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i just can't look (it's killing me)

**Author's Note:**

> i know i normally tag for graphic violence, but i want to say SUPER violent here just so you're sure
> 
> 1/17 grammar pass.

They take to fighting together like ducks do to water, slipping into a seamless cooperation that's nearly wordless. From afar she pops the heads off-- one, two, three-- and he draws them out for both her and himself, shotgun in hand and a wicked curve on his lips. Every time he finishes them off with his dagger Felicia goes dizzy with lust, but he's just her partner and she's just starved, waiting and watching like a creature from beneath the surface, laying in wait until the time is right.

It's not that she's trying to deceive him, she just doesn't know any other way to _be._  The flesh of her humanity had long since been stripped away beneath the wasteland sun. A relentless heat that had bleached her bones, an unforgiving landscape had given her rot and dirt beneath her nails. Felicia is filth and filth is Felicia, and when he pulls from his flask she helplessly watches the tendons in his throat, nails pressed tight into her palms. 

But she has it. Under.  _Control_. 

She turns away when appropriate and keeps her dead stare downcast the way she'd learned in order to pretend, once upon a time. They can't know what they can't see, and when eyes are the window to the soul, well. 

It's best not to give away she's got nothing left. 

As they walk towards Fallon's department store, the beat of their boots against asphalt fall into  synchronous time. Felicia tries to ignore the way he knows the way she's going to turn and how to keep up, pushes away the thoughts of how Hancock doesn't go horrified, terrified, mortified at her carnage. Instead, he joins in on the fray without thinking even once that she's going to turn on him. Never has she been so confused.

Because: She knows she's a monster, and that's easy to handle. Felicia knows how to act and move and breathe like a demon, claws out and fangs dropped and wings spread out behind her as she descends upon someone who'd dared to even gaze upon her visage.

When he thinks she can be something  _more_ , well. That's when it gets confusing. When the line of who she is and who she could _be_ if she just tried stsrt to blend and get muddled. When she gets tangled up in the ways she wants to make him happy, and sour at the fact that she wants to do anything for anyone's sake but her own.

So Felicia scowls, popping open a box of Mental and  tossing half of them back. She offers Hancock the remains, dark brow arched. When he grins it is the sun, and when he laughs it sends unfamiliar tendrils of warmth pulsing through the dead limbs that move her dead body, pumping her blood with something more than poison. Maybe she isn't hollow, after all.

He takes the box and his hand lingers on hers, skin to skin, and Felicia crunches down the tablets with scrutiny, tracing the grooves and divots of his face without intensity. Unable to resist looking at the way his cataract blue eyes shine in the light until she has to tear her glance away, sucking in a sharp breath.  Without a word, she dashes forward, running away from the object of her-- of her lust, her desire, her maddening obsession. The emotions she has are too large for her bone-thin frame. She wants to cut him apart and consume the best parts of him, to cradle his heart in red-slick hands in search of  _knowledge,_ to be the pulse in his very veins in hopes of understanding. What made a man like him tick?

But, more truthfully: what made a man like him so appealing when no other had ever been?

Hancock jogs to keep up. She can tell from the precise way his belt clacks and the rhythmic thump from the strap of his gun and the cadence of his steps and the harsh puff of his breaths-- just as raspy as his voice-- and Felicia could die from the way she is so utterly, intimately aware of his every move. She didn't ask for this and yet here it is, and maybe the Mentats had been a bad idea for her when she was already hyper-focused, eye twitching, shaking and jumpy. From her pack she takes a quick huff of jet to even out, wheezing afterwards. The Jet makes you jittery, or so Felicia's been told, but that's only when the kick wears off and the world isn't swimming, when time snaps back into place after distortion. Combined with Mentats, it sharpens her already sharp mind to the finest of edges, pushing her towards the precipice of breaking. God, she feels like she's going to snap and shake Hancock by the fucking shoulders and scream in his face to just  _notice her_.

Later. Everything could come later. Right now, the world is slow as she raises her rifle and turns her head, eyes dark with a hunger swelling. She says: "Raiders ahead," and isn't  _that_  familiar, the rinse and repeat annihilation of the same violent creatures that had succumbed to their baser instincts as always. History repeats itself over and over and over.

And wouldn't she be the same, if she were on the other side? If she hadn't been taken in by the Minutemen and coaxed back into humanity like hiding a wolf in a dress?

(Yes. The answer is easily yes.)

They will want to hurt her, and mote importantly, they want to hurt  _him_ , and that just wouldn't do. Felicia doesn't need to look over to him to see his smile, listens to him reload his gun with the same thrum of anticipation she got when actually watching him work. Pavlovian fucking response: She's conditioned by the promise of his brutality. It makes her mouth water. 

"Ready up," he replies, and she obeys. They are seamless in action, him climbing up a fire escape to get the literal drop on them while Felicia clamors up onto the hood of a truck, flicking her scope around to get a gauge on distances, on wind, on drop. Sniping is more math than anything else, and what else had she been good for, so long ago? The numbers fall into place and Felicia fires with a crack, bullet casings clinking against the hood of the car as she turns to the next one, and the next, obliterating knees and faces and _more_.

Hancock holds his own as best he can down below, taking down one raider after another, even as they throw themselves at him like zealots upon a pyre. "Oh," he says, in the voice that Felicia follows even yards away, drawn to it like a radroach to radiation, "I'm feral, now."

They don't take lightly to that. They don't take lightly to  _losing_ , and they are until backup shows. What had once been six is now twelve, and Felicia's breath catches in her chest, throwing her off-balance. She'd been so much more effective when alone, without worrying about anything but her own sorry sack of skin and bones. And now, she can't breathe and it's not from adrenaline or the chems so much as abject  _panic._  When one comes for Hancock from behind she shoots them right in the hand, watching their gun drop to the ground with a clatter, and it's  _not enough._ Hancock elbows one and then there's semi-automatics pointed at his face, then he's surrounded, and then, and then. What's the end to this story? How does it end in any way but unfortunate?

Without thinking, without realizing, Felicia finds that she's thrown her sniper rifle over her shoulder, strap taut against her chest as she sprints down to the action at breakneck speed. Mid-movement, Felicia stabs herself in the thigh with syringe after syringe of chems, ignoring the dull aches that make themselves at home beneath her skin.

She runs as fast as he can, but it's too _late_. Felicia gets there just in time to watch Hancock take a stun baton to the temple, and she flinches like a startled radstag at the sight. He sinks to the ground like a god damned stone, down and out for the count. He's been bested in combat before, but never like this, never completely unconscious and surrounded by things (and they are just that: things unworthy of recognition) that _dearly_ wished him harm, with absolutely nothing left to protect him. 

Except for her.

She hears a horrible, screeching yell and only later does she realize it was  _hers_ , the horrible sound signifying the death of the thin veneer of her control as it buckles under her ire. Felicia's body is a live current and they are the sea, and all the firepower they could throw at her would only maker her stronger. The cocktail of Psycho and Buffout pulses inside her, and with dead eyes, empty and glassy--

Felicia  _smiles_.

Like something feral, she launches herself at the nearest woman and tackles her to the ground, wresting her rifle away so swiftly that she hears the bones in her wrist snap like twigs, raising it up to bludgeon the raider to death with the butt of her own gun. Once, twice, until the face is pulp and the skull is shards, death delivered with efficiency, and the gun points upwards to press beneath the chin of the man coming up behind her, firing off three quick rounds that explode his head into sticky fragments, bone and brain raining down on her in a shower. She licks the blood off her lips and crawls off a corpse of her design, dark eyes darting around to find the next victim, drool nearly slavering from her teeth as she bellowed, ugly and guttural and  **wild**.

Felicia jabs herself with another syringe and she doesn't even look at the label, loping towards Hancock's fallen body, skittering low like some sort of thin spider. She sticks him with a Stim, in the worst place-- just a random place on his shoulder-- but it would have to do. He _needs_ it. Felicia reaches for the raider who'd been poised to deliver a killing blow, and smiles. With bruised knuckles and bony hands, she breaks his neck so, so easily. All it takes is a head clutched in her shaking hands and just  _one_  twist, barely more than a flick of the wrist, and they die. The fragility of humanity is something Felicia realizes every day, every time she ends a life easily, her motions on repeat.

Laughter bubbles up and out of her chest, dark and ichorous. It sticks to her lungs as it changes into something more and more hysterical with every passing second, the humor of the situation apparent to no one but her.

There are  _more_  of them, and Felicia was going to enjoy rending the flesh from their bones, more than anything in the world. They'd made a most grievous mistake, stepping between a predator and her quarry. Hancock was  _hers_.

"Come out," she croons to the empty clear in an almost sing-song voice, spinning around low. The red flecked on her glasses made Felicia look exactly as ominous as she was, marking her as the harbinger of their demise, as the corruption that had spread across the Commonwealth hiding beneath a gas mask, fueled by someone else's good intentions. "I know that you're  _there_. Come get me."

From behind a truck emerges two with the clear intent of tag-teaming, running towards her with a gun and stun baton respectively, and she recognizes the latter as the one who'd shocked Hancock, and the red seeps in around her eyes all over again, breathing hard like a bull at the sight of a waving cape. They get closer and closer but she stands her ground, bullets bouncing off her ballistic weave without any problem at all, her fists clenching so tight that her nails draw blood.

The baton raises up, and instead of connecting with her head, Felicia grabs it with her bare hand with a wild howl. Right now, on adrenaline and fury and chems, she has the strength of a deathclaw, and it's enough to let her withstand the volts of electricity crawling all over her skin. Baton in hand, she twists it until it pops out of the raider's hand, disappointed that he let go before she could break all five of his fingers.

Instead, Felicia grabs him by the back of the head and shoves the baton so far into his mouth that it comes out the other side of his skull with a sickening crunch, dropping his body but holding onto the weapon, so that it pulls free of the gaping hole in his head, ready to be used all over again, She leaped over Hancock's body to chase down the now fleeing raider-- the last one, the very last-- and whips him with the electrified end right in the neck. He drops, rolling onto the ground both paralyzed and twitching, immobilized and vulnerable. Felicia's giggling tapers off, finally going silent as she raised up a steel-toed boot and brought it down on his horrible fucking face, ending it all.

With the final threat gone, Felicia scrambles back to Hancock's side, her face painted red and her hands too, slicked up to the wrist in red viscera. Her clothes are splattered with the evidence of her reckoning, with the gore of her revenge, and he looks at her, long and hard.

"Hey," he says, reaching for her trembling hands and unseeing eyes, the death rattle in her chest too-loud, "you still with me?"

Felicia tugs away violently, shaking her head, eyes flicking wildly, still on guard for  _more_ , standing to circle around him. To  _protect_  him at all costs, ready to bring down the world if it meant that he was okay.

But Hancock is fine. Rattled, but fine, and yet it doesn't sink in, even as he stands slowly, without any limping, watching her all the while.

He'd seen her fight, before. He'd seen her do a lot of things, and most of it he seemed to like, even. But Felicia knows full well that Hancock was looking at her with the full knowledge of what she was. She drops the gore slicked baton with disgust,  _monster_  ring in the back of her head like a bell. She wishes so bad that she  _didn't care_ , because she hadn't for so long and now Hancock made her want to. The conflict in her oscillates at all times, flipping between decency and inhumanity. 

"Gonna take that as a no, then," he mutters with a sigh, pinching between his eyebrows, above his missing nose and Felicia wishes for a second that she hadn't given him a Stim, so that he could just wake up somewhere else with her awkward smile and not realize the extents she'd go--

Hancock grabs her by the shoulder, tight enough to bruise, five points of pain startling her out of manic anxiety. She gasps, facing him suddenly and jerking away as if burned. She gives him her full attention, or as much of it as she can, all things considered.

" _What,_ " Felicia hisses, hunching over, looking much smaller than her six feet and change. There's no more Jet in her bag, and what she wouldn't do for a dozen hits right then and there, consequences be damned. Anything to slow down, anything to modulate herself, because the Psycho was wearing off but  _the rage wasn't_. "What is it? How much did you see?"

"Most of it," he admits, and she can tell he's licking his teeth, reaching for the right words and failing. Felicia is waiting, waiting, for the inevitable disapproval that she tries so hard to avoid. Why did she  _care_? "S'fucking scary, Leesha. You never exercise that kinda, uh, lacka  _restraint_  most of the time."

Grinding her teeth, she nods. "Correct." Stick to as few words as possible. Don't give him any ammo. Don't lie, most of all, because lying to a liar is a fool's game.

"Why now?" he asks, and Felicia could scream. It's  _obvious_ , isn't it? In the way Felicia, even now, scans the horizon, hand prepped to grab for her pistol at the smallest thing. But Hancock is looking at  _her_ , waiting for  _her_ , and she doesn't know why.

Felicia fixes him with a dead-eyed stare, breathing still erratic, and she's not yet snapped out of her fight or fight or  **fight** instincts, lip still half curled into a snarl. But Hancock, again, lays a hard hand on her, this time clasping the side of her neck tight, thumb pressed to the hollow of her throat, and she swallows a gasp. He didn't leak radiation, but it was in his bones like ichor was in hers, as sure as sin. He fixes her with a stare that's almost knowing, creeping up on something unfamiliar but steady, circling around a dynamic that would later define them.

"Answer the question, Felicia."

She does not pull away, nor does she sag into his touch. But... Her hand drops from the holster around her waist. Her fists unclench. "You went down," Felicia says, succinct, sullen, avoiding his eyes not out of deference but out of refusing to show her  _hunger_ , vast and absolute. She doesn't want to scare him any more than she already has. "I had to ensure that you were safe from harm."

"Didn't have to turn 'em into newspaper pulp, though. Saw that guy's face,  _yikes_ , sister." Hancock sounds half disgusted and half...in awe? She can't tell, but his warm touch stays on her skin. He doesn't even pay any mind to the blood, reddening his own fingers as he touches her. That tight grasp, tight enough to leave a constellation of violet on her skin grounds her to the earth, allowing her a moment of peace so that her mind can return to her body. She gets a little less wild with every passing second, and it's not that she turns into a human from an animal, but she pulls the illusion back over the monster, concealing it until next time.

"I know. I can't, uh. Yeah that's not really..." Felicia rubs at her eyes, exhausted, and she's not sure if she's crying or not. It's been so long since she has. "Do you want the socially acceptable answer, or the real one? They're both true."

He tugs her down, and she folds like a house of cards, hitting the ground with a thump, and he leans over her crossed legs, muscles thrumming with the desire to  _leave_. But Hancock wants her to stay, and so. "Oh, but I'm  _greedy_. Fork 'em both over. You don't see this kinda freakshow every day." His hold grows hesitant now, like he's just realized what he's been doing, and Felicia wants to pull it  _back_. But his hand retreats, and she scowls.

"The _right_ answer is that I didn't want you to die, isn't it?" she bites out, frustration written on her face. "That's normal. That's, reasonable. Right?" Felicia looks to him, waiting for an answer, and she thinks for a moment that he finally realizes that she isn't being rhetorical. She doesn't  _know_.

"I don't know if there's a right answer," he answers, leaning back against the truck's tires, and Felicia takes a moment to revel in just how  _fine_ he is. Not one thread out of place, minus the new bloodstains. Relief blooms between her ribs, and it _hurts_ so sweet. "You just feel what you feel, ain't that right, and all that touchy feely bullshit?" He snorts, and waves his hand. "But, for real now. You been good to me. Not just everyone'd be willing to travel with a ghoul. You got my back, sister. I appreciate that."  

That word, again, _sister_ , a distancing word that widens the gulf between them. Felicia's not sure if he uses it casually or with any sort of meaning, but it's the furthest thing from what she wants. "I did it," she says, bland, "because they were going to hurt you, and that's not for them to do." Her eyes roll over to him, and it hides not at all the desire for him, ferocious and all consuming. "I enjoyed it. I would do it again. Because it's you."

The words are out, torn from her with kindness and patience like nails from the bed, left bleeding and painful and raw. "Now, if you're done having me ruin a perfectly good partnership, maybe it's time for you to return to--" The anxiety is back in spades, the annoyance, the hatred, seething and black--

He leans over, then, and grips Felicia by the chin, even as she's covered in blood and gore, red from forehead to chin. She is halfway to feral by default, and Hancock just smiles. "Guess I owe you one then, don't I?" His raspy voice is just as it always is, friendly and teasing. Felicia blinks, absolutely bested, jaw clicking shut. He lets go to lean back on his palms, a lazy grin plastered on his face. "Well well well, never thought I'd see the day. The great Felicia Shepard without anything to say."

Felicia scowls, and stretches her legs out to kick him ineffectually. "Shut up!  _God_. Were you even  _listening_?" 

"Course I was. Bad people do bad thing. You fix bad thing. Problem solved, right?"

She boggles, and abruptly stands for the express purpose of stomping her foot, well on her way to a tantrum. "No! That's. _Jesus_ , Hancock. I thought you were all about, like. The. The shit! The stupid shit! The help nice people and be a good person shit, which is fucking impossible by the way, there is literally nothing I can do that will ever fix it entirely, and you won't even let me  _steal_ anything along the way to make up for the trouble, and--" Felicia exhales, closing her eyes. She's talked herself in circles around this before, about what it would be like to-- come clean, as it were. To Hancock.

Honestly, Felicia never could have guessed it'd be something like this. " _Back to the point_. I stomped a guy's head in, Hancock. And I really, really liked it, you have no _idea--_ it was good. They were all so, so good. You can't just, _whatever_ that away!"

The whole time she rants, Hancock watches her with rapt attention, fingers crossed over his belly. If his hat had been tipped over, he would have looked like he was contently napping. "Leesha," he says, patient. "We  _all_ kill. You've seen me kill. I know you have, you pay a lot of attention. And hey, I have my fun with it, too, even if it's never to uh.  _The same extremes_. So, you may have a few loose screws in your gourd. So what? When we're out there, you're trying to do the right thing. And in a world like this? That counts."

She crosses her arms, skeptical, looking down again. "I think you're  _really_ misunderstanding me. It goes way beyond that. The shit I do for you, is. Well. It's definitely shit I wouldn't do when in trying to... It's... I used to do this shit _all_ the time. To everyone, for no reason except I wanted to. Before-- you know. Joining the Minutemen, and _you_ , and."

Hancock holds out his hand, and by instinct Felicia pulls him up, steadying him on his feet. "Believe me," he says, holding onto her tight, so that she can't get away. "I know what you are. I know what kind of power you pack, or at least I do now." His words husky are in her ear, distracting. Hips lips graze her skin, and smells like radiation and earth and blood. "What I'm  _saying_ is: so? I know that you do the right thing. For me. Because you  _trust_ me, right?"

Felicia nods, mutely, because when he's close like this it's nearly impossible to resist the urge to bite him, to kiss him. To do both. 

"So trust me now," Hancock says, letting go of her hand with one last lingering squeeze. "You and me? We're fine. And what you are? Well, it can be our little secret, so long as you keep to the baddies. Don't sweat what you can't change, Felicia. Life's about what you _do._ "

And then, easy as you please, he starts to loot Felicia's trail of bodies. As if he hadn't just witnessed a massacre on his behalf. As if she hadn't just exposed the sadistic in her. As if he hadn't just dropped a second bombshell on her head.

Felicia leans back against the truck, listening to the steady thud of her heart. He was the object of her-- of her lust, her desire, her maddening obsession. The emotions she has are too large for her bone-thin frame. She wants to cut him apart and consume the best parts of him, to cradle his heart in red-slick hands in search of  _knowledge,_ to be the pulse in his very veins in hopes of understanding.

She just never thought he'd _let_ her until now. 

Soon, she thinks, trailing after him and, admittedly, admiring his ass. Soon, he'll want to talk. And then, maybe...Felicia can ask.

**For more.**

**Author's Note:**

> catch me at [my tumblr](http://lurks-beneath.me)!


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